"I Was Hornswoggled" Episode 1 Show-notes: The Jig Is Up!

Episode: 1

Title: The Jig is Up!

Date:

Greetings to you!

Welcome to my podcast journal where I share my awakening from my narcissist induced nightmare! I go by Rainna on the inter webs.

You may be wondering what Hornswoggle means? Well it is a synonym to bamboozled. Bamboozled is how I feel , Hornswoggled means “to trick or deceive (someone)” and ohhh let me tell you. I have definitely been Hornswoggled! And if you are here, there's a chance you may have been too, or you know someone who has, or you just really wanted to know what Hornswoggled meant :) Either way you are welcome here!

I will start right off , sharing a bit about myself.

I am not a therapist, a counselor, or even a life coach. I am just a freshly 40 year old woman who is a wife and a mom of 2 and currently waking up from a nightmare I didn't know I was having. You see? If you were to ask me if I had a good childhood, I would have answered you yes. It had its ups and downs as much as anyone else's . Nothing stood out as abnormal as far as I could tell, or did it? I'm not sure now. Now I question everything.

I thought about how to start this journal entry of sorts, and i decided chronological just would do. I might as well start from the day all of the puzzle pieces fit together and things really started to make sense.

I have a sister. We are 2 years 2 months and 2 days apart and I am the oldest. We had a great relationship growing up. The typical sibling tiffs, but we always got along and enjoyed each others company. As we got older and I moved out and our lives started to veer off on their separate paths as they do. It seems that things started to get rocky regarding our family the more we got older. It definitely increased the more independent and successful we became. I will skim over these events and decades for now because I plan to revisit them as I unpack them and look at them with this new set of eyes. Each event all makes sense now that I know the who what and whys of each painful memory. For now I will fast forward and tell you that last 20 years my sister and I were complete strangers to each other. We had been fed so many lies and pitted against each other. The one feeding the lies was ironically the one telling everyone she wished her daughters would just get along. It was our Mom.

Before I move forward I will add that in October of 2018 I got baptized and gave my life to the Lord. I am pretty sure that without having God to lean on in this time , I would have resorted to binge drinking boxed wine like I had been 2 years prior. It is safe to say that I would have never found out that my life was a lie without him too. It is because of him and his message of forgiveness and grace that I felt at peace invited my sister one my weekly grocery grab with our Mom.

My mom met me at my house with my sister and we piled into my husbands truck. It felt a bit strange because for 2 decades we have pretty much been leading separate lives and only hear about each other through our precious little mom. My mom sat in the back seat and my sister rode shotgun. It reminded me of the old days when I would drive us around the dirt roads listening to Metallica and eat Funyuns with my new shiny drivers license. We used to have so much fun. Looking over at her in the passenger seat that day, she looked very uncomfortable. As we headed out of town to my mom and I’s favorite grocery store, I thought we would also hit up our favorite dinner. My mom and I went out together pretty much every week to get a bite to eat with the kids and to grab groceries. She was my closest of friends. Something told me it was time to include my sister. My mom had told me so many times that she was living a Godless life, filled with anxiety and depression. That she was a “late bloomer” still acting like a 16 year old in a 37 year old body. That she wouldn't have a job if my mom hadn't forced her to. She would always tell me she hoped that we could rub off on my sister if we spent more time with her. I didn't really know what to believe because everything that my sister had done to me and said about me in the past were lined up with that I was consistently told about my sister for the past 10 years.

So we stopped for lunch and it provided a great opportunity for us to sit and chat and have a few pretty normal conversations. My sister was really seeming to open up. I had talked about God and how he was working in my life on and off and never received any push back from my sister. She wasn’t banning any religious talk, she wasn’t trying to skip out on the bill, she wasn’t acting rude or mean to my mom like I had been told she does. I was a bit confused but I wasn't going to question it. I was just going to embrace it because it is something my mom and I had wanted for years. All of us to get along.

We finished our lunch and headed down the street to do our weekly treasure hunting at the Goodwill. We love to see what great finds we can get thrift store shopping. You would be amazed at what goodies you can find! That day we found an especially interesting treasure. It was called REALITY. My sister stepped out of the truck, spun around on her heel, pointed right at my mom in the back seat and boldly proclaimed, “ YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO ACT AROUND BOTH OF US!” And that was the beginning of the awakening. We had both been lulled to sleep for 20 years. Fed lies and manipulated to the point that we went from sisters who shared a room as children to being made into complete strangers. At that moment, I think it was evident to everyone that THE JIG WAS UP!

A couple of days after our outing my sister reached out to discuss what she meant since we really couldn’t talk about it around our mom. That is when she told me that she thinks our mother is a narcissist. She had been watching some videos about it and our mom fit them to the T and in some cases even our dad. He passed away on Christmas in 2014, so we really have no way to know the extent of anything regarding him, but that night I became pretty aware that our mother was not only a narcissist, but I would take it a step further and say I wholeheartedly believe she is a covert Narcissist. Keep in mind, I'm not a professional, but every article and video I have seen coupled with my experiences and those of my sisters, combined checks all the boxes. As I unpack the different events and layers, I think you will be able to see why we feel this way. We can not clinically diagnose her, but with or without a title, the mental abuse we’ve grown accustomed too has a name. The nightmare we were living in is over and in some ways a new one is knocking at the door , wanting to begin.

I will be wrapping this first entry of “ I've been Hornswoggled” right here and will plan to pick up with more of a discussion about covert narcissism and what I am learning about it and how it has helped bring my family and my sister a lot of peace.